


lay down your head by the soft river bed

by Anonymous



Category: UNB (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Background Relationships, Dreams, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 17:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17166605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Regarde le soir comme si le jour y devait mourir; et le matin comme si toute chose y naissait.Look upon the evening as the death of the day; and upon the morning as the birth of of all things.





	lay down your head by the soft river bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nekrateholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekrateholic/gifts).



Once, they were young and full of life.

◭

At the beginning, Junyoung had no past. For him, there was only a now.

He opened his eyes and looked upon the Tree.

_Toute connaissance que n'a pas précédé une sensation m'est inutile_ , he read. _I have no use for knowledge that has not been preceded by a sensation._ The leaves of the Tree fluttered in a breeze he could not feel, and he shivered.

Though he did not know it at the time, his purpose was to travel the dreams of humans and let them grow through components of the Tree. Take, for example, a dream about a particularly filling bowl of soup. If the fruit of the Tree made up the broth of the soup, so then the leaves form the other contents of the bowl, and the bark the bowl itself. The detail of this dream—and indeed, all dreams—was much enhanced by the Tree. The base of the dream, happenings and events, are influenced by the Tree’s ancient roots and branches, which was not added separately by Junyoung, but grew so that they were woven within and between the minds of all humankind.

Junyoung did not think much about whether his actions in service of the Tree were good or bad, for such judgments did not apply to his work. He only knew that they were necessary, and that he was to be the one to do them. The world had need of such dreams, for progress and change to occur. The world needed a dream traveler.

◭

Junyoung took a breath and dropped into the dream, easy as slipping into still water. It was a movement that came naturally to him, same as a fish knows how to swim or a hearth fire knows to burn.

Here, Junyoung was in a child’s dream—an infant, really. He took care to remove his shoes as he crossed the threshold to enter the room, which was quiet and dark. It made sense for this to be the setting of the dream, because this was all the child would know.

Junyoung selected a ripe fruit from his pouch, and knelt down to the crib to set it down. He prepared the bark tea and left it in a cup on the stand beside the crib. As its steam curled upwards, the room began to fill with the sounds of a soft lullaby. Junyoung heard a gurgling, laughing noise from the crib, and stepped over to look: the dreamer child smiled contentedly up at him, and Junyoung returned a smile in kind. In the dreams of young ones, it did not matter so much to avoid being seen, because for the most part they welcomed him, and later simply forgot.

Leaving behind the dreamer, Junyoung stood up and surveyed the effects his work had brought. The walls shuddered slightly as they stretched and expanded; the room became suffused with a pale golden light. It never got old, watching these changes.

◭

Over the span of countless dreams and many ages, Junyoung had never seen any like him, hidden in the slivers of dream worlds where they meshed with each other and with reality. He had never met any others at the Tree, and he conducted all his work alone.

How was he to know that he was not the only one of his kind?

The first time he saw Yoochan, he dismissed him as—what else?—a figment of the dream he was in. It was not unusual to see shadowy figures skulking about in the corners or drifting along in the sky or sea of the dream, though they were rarely active unless they were alongside the dreamer themselves. Yoochan was animated from the start, and it was this spark of liveliness that drew Junyoung’s attention.

Junyoung caught a glimpse of the dreamer, this time a young adult who was dreaming about their workplace. The dreamer was walking next to someone and was engaged in a vigorous dispute about the cost efficiency of electricity. This was not unusual in itself, but the very air of the dream seemed to push and pull at the person that was not the dreamer. Junyoung stood still, watching and puzzling over what felt different about the person that talked so freely to the dreamer, yet was not part of the dream themselves. He took note of the mistiness that formed and shifted around the figure, made of a separate material than the solidness of the dream. It was, Junyoung realized with a start, not unlike the wisps of mist that surrounded himself.

So this other person was not a person at all. And, Junyoung realized, casting back into his memory of dream travels, this was not the first time he had seen them, either. He recalled a previous dream where the dreamer had been busy creating their art, with photos, paints, and more. Throughout it all, this other being had been present, helping to arrange the lights and objects as necessary. Junyoung had been there to infuse some ground leaves from the Tree in the art materials, but he had disappeared before the dreamer turned around.

As he was thinking about this, Junyoung kept a steady gaze on the other being. He had not even glanced in Junyoung’s direction yet, but Junyoung suspected that he had been aware of Junyoung’s eyes on him the whole time. Suddenly, the being looked straight at Junyoung, and though he didn’t smile, his eyes had an impish light within them, a look that seemed to dance on his face.

Junyoung did not feel a chill, as perhaps he should have, but instead averted his gaze instinctively. He felt a foreign warmth in his hands, and opened them to find the bark within them crumbling away, being consumed, and he knew then that the other being could only be another of his kind. By the time he lifted his head and searched out the other dream traveler, he could not see him, but felt a tug on his chest in a direction of a yet-unvisited part of the dream.

Pushing through crowds of people, figures conjured up by the dreamer, Junyoung tried to keep the fleeing tail of the tug’s sensation in his grasp. He could almost see in front of him a trail of mist, the other mist that didn’t come from him.

Finally, he caught up with the other dream traveler in a room that was at the end of a hallway whose other end led nowhere. The long white table in the center was one of the only things in the room and stretched between him and the other traveler.

“Are you—” Junyoung cast about for the phrase, usually hardly needing language. “My replacement?”

The other one shook his head. “No, but for a while I wondered if you weren’t mine.” It was a rarity for Junyoung to be directly addressed, and his voice was both higher and lower than Junyoung expected.

Appraising Junyoung, the other traveler continued, “Do we have different names, or is the name I have the one that all of our kind are known by?”

“Mine is Junyoung.”

“Yoochan,” returned the other dream traveler, then mused, “So we are unique. Maybe to reflect the different ways we do our work? I can see that you provide the materials of the dream, and I shape them.”

“Through direct contact with the dreamer?” Junyoung asked. He drew closer.

“So you _have_ seen me in dreams,” Yoochan said, alight with mirth. “You looked so surprised earlier.”

“I didn’t realize,” admitted Junyoung. He studied their mists and noticed slightly different patterns.

“Is it in our nature to operate with these complementary methods, or did we grow to be this way?” Yoochan wondered.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

Yoochan waved a hand. “It was rhetorical.”

Perhaps they could have found an answer to Yoochan’s rhetorical question if they ever met any more dream travelers. Or perhaps there was only meant to be the two of them, and their meeting was cosmically unlikely in the first place. Perhaps their meeting changed the way they worked entirely. 

But they did not meet any others, or if they did, did not recognize them for what they were. It was, simply, the way it was.

◭

Once, they were young and full of life. But as with all things, they must face their end. Some would consider them lucky to know in advance, even for the briefest of moments, the time when this would occur.

And now, Junyoung knows, it is time. In a blink, as if he came to know the fact in the same moment, Yoochan appears silently by his side.

“Hello, you,” says Junyoung.

Yoochan nods amicably at Junyoung, stepping closer. “Junyoung,” he greets.

It’s easy now for Junyoung to sling his arm around Yoochan’s shoulders. Chatting, too, is easy, even as he feels the mist unspooling slowly from his being.

“How was the last one for you, then?” he asks. The dreamer had been a dancer, with an intense focus that carried over to his dreams.

Yoochan replies, “Sharp looks, but a warm heart.”

Junyoung agrees. “A lot of drive,” he adds. “I wonder...maybe we’ll have successors to see what he gets up to, in the future.”

They stand still in companionable silence. They have a few moments yet.

“Are you ready?” Yoochan asks him unexpectedly.

Junyoung thinks about it. It isn’t as if he has always known this time would come, not like how he came to learn to scale the Tree and prepare its fruit, though he is also willing to accept the fact of it, that he will cease to exist. But then, that is perhaps the very nature of readiness. “I think so,” he says. “And you?”

Yoochan looks thoughtful, an introspective look on his face, then says, “Well, since you are. We’ll go together or not at all, I think.”

They are in a field, one they have been to many times. Across the many stalks of grasses, almost as tall as the two dream travelers between them, the river rushes by, kisses the mountains in the distance. Junyoung turns over his memories of this place in his head. For a moment, he almost wishes that they had more time—they have a dance to help dream, children to watch grow. Perhaps he’s not ready after all.

But then Yoochan takes his hand, and all Junyoung knows is that they’ve had an eternity of their own already. They stop walking, mist surrounding them still. A final thought comes to Junyoung: that maybe, this is what it’s like for humans to fall asleep.

Then, he closes his eyes—is that Yoochan or the mist’s cool touch on his hand?—and the end claims him gently. It’s as easy as slipping into a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, nekrateholic! Your prompts were great, and I thought a dreamwalkers AU would work especially well in combination with imagery from the Feeling MV.
> 
> The French quoted in this fic and the MV is from The Fruits of the Earth, and I used the translations from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1RugjPu1Z4).


End file.
